Coming to grips with the click and go generation

A FEW parental eyebrows might be raised when a visiting psychologist goes on record saying computer games are a good thing for their children.

But visiting clinical psychologist and family therapist Andrew Fuller isn't here to tell parents they can do a better job by letting their kids spend more time with the Playstation.

"I think there's a lot of good things in computer games that we can learn from about what engages kids," he said. "They're a kind of different way of learning."

Mr Fuller, a Fellow at the University of Melbourne, visited Grafton yesterday to present three seminars to parents, students and teachers.

Through involving his audience, Mr Fuller hoped to offer adults advice on how to improve relationships with today's kids, a generation he's dubbed the 'click and go' generation.

"I think they're (kids) are adapting to a different world and I think why that's perplexing is because parents who grew up in a different time are trying to use techniques their parents used on them and it's just destined to fail," he said.

"For thousands of years parenting boiled down to a combination of bribery, distraction and fear (laughs) with a mix of love but today's kids need more than that, they're actually after an explanation about why things happen."